Official welcome of the headteacher Mrs. Reinbacher-Richter to the guests from

Great Wyrley High school April 28th, 2005

Dear
Mrs Williams
Dear Mr Leach

Dear Ladies and gentlemen,
Dear colleagues,
Dear girls and boys.

As the acting head teacher I warmly would like to welcome you as our guests at the Albert-Schweitzer Gymnasium. My colleagues and I, we appreciate it very much that, we rather quickly came to terms for setting up a pupil exchange programme with your school last year after some negotiations, bringing together both our schools, pupils, and teachers. We were fortunate, as having been the first ones to benefit from this exchange by having sent our folks to you last year. Now, it will be our turn to make your stay at our school, in Marl, and in our region as pleasant as possible.

As you all know, pupil exchanges become more and more important to build up the European Union. This union should not only exist in political Sunday speeches, for that reason, we should aim at providing opportunities to pupils and teachers to get a deeper understanding of similarities and differences concerning history, culture, attitudes, and behaviour between Ger-many and (your country) Great Britain. Therefore, we would like to share with you our com-mon experiences and points of references, and would like to introduce you to our customs, our way of life within and outside of school.

An exchange of pupils which hopefully will establish future friendships lasting for years is the best way to build up sustainable understanding across national borders. Here, I refer to my own personal experience. When I was 16 years old, I met Christine on a school exchange, a girl from Sheffield, not that far away from Great Wyrley. We became pen friends. After more than 35 years, we are still writing each other sharing our experiences and hopes; from time to time we meet each other, together with our families, either in England or Germany.

Now coming to our own show, we have organized an interesting programme with lots of excit-ing activities all taking place in and around Marl.

On the English side, special thanks go to head teacher Mr. Leach and to Mrs. Williams from the school board, who have made the exchange possible and of course thanks to Mrs Bryden and Mrs. Killip as the teachers in charge.
For the German part, I would like to thank Mrs. Freeman and Mrs. Kittel for having spent so much time and work into planning and organising this exchange.
Without all these preparations and support, all of you having given to make this programme a success we would not be here this morning.
Many thanks also to those pupils and their parents and to the teachers of our school, who have offered to host our guest pupils and teachers for this week.

I am sure, during the following week, you will experience life and drive of a German school and sometimes you will be surprised to find out just how different German and English school life can be. And that’s what a school exchange makes so interesting.
Certainly, the experiences you will make within your hosting families in Marl this week will be of special importance to you.
So, please be courageous, use whatever language skills you have, and talk as much as possible to each other using the native language of your counterpart. As you know, you all are experts of your respective language. And what is better than learning a language with a little help of an expert becoming a friend.
After the initial difficulties you will find that you are really enjoying yourself - well, that was my experience!
To conclude, I wish you an exciting stay in Marl and many good experiences. Again, Thank you very much for being here.

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